Rumsfeld

Detailed investigation reveals unexpected connections among people who played critical roles related to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Earlier articles have covered some of those connections with respect to the World Trade Center (WTC) and the official reports which were produced to explain the WTC events.[1] This article will begin to outline a wider set of connections that encompasses more aspects of 9/11. Readers may find that, with respect to the 9/11 attacks and those who were responsible for protecting us from terrorism, it is a small world after all.

Barry McDaniel came to the WTC security company Stratesec, in 1998, to become its Chief Operating Officer. In the years before 9/11, Stratesec had contracts to provide security services not only for the WTC, but also for United Airlines, which owned two of the planes hijacked on 9/11, and Dulles Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off that day.

At the WTC, McDaniel was in charge of the security operation in terms of what he called a “completion contract,” to provide services “up to the day the buildings fell down.”[2] McDaniel came to Stratesec directly from BDM International, where he had been Vice President for nine years. BDM was a major subsidiary of The Carlyle Group for most of that time. When Barry McDaniel started at BDM, the company began getting a large amount of government business “in an area the Navy called Black Projects,” or budgets that were kept secret.[3]

Confounding lawyers and legal scholars all over the world, Judge John Walker, first cousin of former President George W. Bush, was one of three judges of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to hear argument Tuesday in Gallop v. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers, the lawsuit brought by a soldier injured during the attack on the Pentagon that accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney, former secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers of conspiring to facilitate the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that killed 3000 Americans and has resulted in the deaths of many more, due to the toxicity of the clean-up conditions at Ground Zero.

William Veale, April Gallop’s lawyer from the Center for 9/11 Justice, learning of the assignment the usual 5 days before the argument, filed a motion to disqualify Judge Walker the day before the argument.